Ex-official Shot, Killed In Mexico

Former Prosecutor Slain Outside Home

May 11, 1995|The New York Times

MEXICO CITY - — A former state prosecutor who helped investigate the killing of a Roman Catholic cardinal in 1993 and a series of other drug-related crimes was shot to death on Wednesday in Guadalajara.

Leobardo Larios, 50, was slain by one or more gunmen waiting outside his home as he left to teach at the University of Guadalajara law school, Jalisco state officials said.

He had stepped down as the state's attorney general after the conservative opposition swept the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party from power in February elections.

The killing was the latest in a series of deadly incidents since the murder of Cardinal Juan Posadas outside the Guadalajara airport in May 1993. Last week, seven inmates were killed and 58 people were wounded during a two-day riot at the main state prison.

Radio reports from Guadalajara quoted government officials as saying investigators were focusing on a well-known hit man who worked for drug-trafficking organizations in Jalisco.

"One of the hypotheses is that this was done by people tied to drug trafficking," said Sergio Villa, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office. "Drug traffickers were involved in the killing of Cardinal Posadas, and there have been any number of clashes among traffickers in the state. But it may also have been that he was killed by some other criminal who he affected in one of his investigations."

A former senior federal official who worked with Larios on the joint state-federal investigation into the killing of the cardinal described the former prosecutor as "a serious man with a good reputation."

But as the senior law-enforcement official during one of the more turbulent periods in Jalisco's recent history, Larios did not make a name for himself as a particularly aggressive prosecutor.

Larios was particularly criticized for a series of irregularities in his inquiry into the strangulation of a suspect in the cardinal's shooting, Ramon Torres, who was being held in the Guadalajara city jail.

Opinion polls have shown that few Mexicans agree with the the official account of Posadas' killing. The government said a drug-trafficking organization mistook the cardinal for the leader of a rival gang, who was at the airport at the same time.